Michael Buscher, chief executive officer of manufacturer Vanguard Defense Industries, said this is the first local law enforcement agency to buy one of his units.

He said they are designed to carry weapons for local law enforcement.

"The aircraft has the capability to have a number of different systems on board. Mostly, for law enforcement, we focus on what we call less lethal systems," he said, including Tazers that can send a jolt to a criminal on the ground or a gun that fires bean bags known as a "stun baton."

"You have a stun baton where you can actually engage somebody at altitude with the aircraft. A stun baton would essentially disable a suspect," he said.

Michael Buscher, chief executive officer of manufacturer Vanguard Defense Industries, said this is the first local law enforcement agency to buy one of his units.

He said they are designed to carry weapons for local law enforcement.

"The aircraft has the capability to have a number of different systems on board. Mostly, for law enforcement, we focus on what we call less lethal systems," he said, including Tazers that can send a jolt to a criminal on the ground or a gun that fires bean bags known as a "stun baton."

"You have a stun baton where you can actually engage somebody at altitude with the aircraft. A stun baton would essentially disable a suspect," he said.

Of course not. The worst case scenario was already cooked up earlier in the thread. I think it involved Cheetos.

I was responding to your question about "why we go in that direction".

If you believe that "no drones -> unarmed drones -> less-lethal drones -> armed drones" isn't a likely direction for this to go over the next xx years, I'd be interested to see where you think it will stop - and what makes you think that.

Of course not. The worst case scenario was already cooked up earlier in the thread. I think it involved Cheetos.

I was responding to your question about "why we go in that direction".

If you believe that "no drones -> unarmed drones -> less-lethal drones -> armed drones" isn't a likely direction for this to go over the next xx years, I'd be interested to see where you think it will stop - and what makes you think that.

Honestly, I'm not entirely concerned with what is on the thing, but how it is used. The worst case scenario isn't the lethality of the equipment but rather the who, how, and why the equipment is deployed. What has been suggested in this thread is that humanity itself is removed from law enforcement, that this tech lends itself to rampant abuse of our rights - up to and including lethal force where lethal force is unnecessary. That's the worst case scenario, and I don't buy it.

One is the permanent "eye in the sky" role, in which you park one or more UAVs above a city 24/7 and use it as a live map. I'd be okay with civil UAVs that were used purely for 24/7 reconnaissance of a metro area, but it shouldn't be restricted to law enforcement--it should be a public feed. You could use it for traffic analysis (motorized, not electronic), to detect fires/other disasters, to monitor crowds at very large events, etc. It would also be a high-res and up-to-date replacement/adjunct for Google Maps, in your local area. I think it would be a legitimately useful thing for a city to have, and I'm sure LEOs would have uses for such a feed as well (i.e. chasing/following a car, crowd control, whatever).

The other LEO use is for surveillance--flying a small robot into a hard-to-reach place to snoop around. That should require a warrant, but I don't particularly have a problem with it either. It's just another tool.

The potential for abuse is orthogonal to the technology here. We need to seriously rethink how our police work, and how to keep them accountable, but we're never going to succeed by simply taking away certain toys.

I'm just saying that if President Santorum is going to send me a ticket everytime the drones catch me wacking off, I'm moving to Canada.

Well you know with his anti-porn stance, his anti-choice stance, and his pretty much anything anti-sexual it will be more than just drones, we would be chipped any any sexual arousal would be penalized by 40 lashings.

What if the idea of 40 lashings aroused him?

I think another obvious place for UAVs is air freight. Unmanned, ultra-fuel-efficient cargo drones. Seems logical, to me, as the first place non-government UAVs would need to interact with the FAA.

It's not like pilots are a huge obstacle in current air freight. Cargo drones don't make sense for large scale freight. Only on the small end competing with helicopters and medflights in cessnas for things like organs.

It's not like pilots are a huge obstacle in current air freight. Cargo drones don't make sense for large scale freight. Only on the small end competing with helicopters and medflights in cessnas for things like organs.

Maybe there's a cost benefit to replacing salaries and benefits with startup costs and maintenance contracts.

It's not like pilots are a huge obstacle in current air freight. Cargo drones don't make sense for large scale freight. Only on the small end competing with helicopters and medflights in cessnas for things like organs.

Maybe there's a cost benefit to replacing salaries and benefits with startup costs and maintenance contracts.

An air freight UAV wouldn't need any life support systems and could be made more fuel efficient. AFAIK, fuel efficiency *is* a big part of air freight. An all UAV air-freight could also use completely separate airports as well. With no human beings on any of the aircraft, an all UAV airfield could run much cheaper and pack planes in more tightly.

The cargo companies have an investment in their current planes and they wouldn't be phased out right away. The UAVs would probably be phased in incrementally for short and medium hops. Probably easier, from a technology standpoint, to make an efficient small-cargo UAV than a full competitor for a 727 or DC10 or whatever FedEx is running these days.

Quote:

Zeppelin cargo drones might make sense

I was actually thinking that cargo UAVs would be an area that some radical ideas could be tried before they were applied to human transport. Things like hybrid lighter-than-air lifting bodies.

An air freight UAV wouldn't need any life support systems and could be made more fuel efficient. AFAIK, fuel efficiency *is* a big part of air freight. An all UAV air-freight could also use completely separate airports as well. With no human beings on any of the aircraft, an all UAV airfield could run much cheaper and pack planes in more tightly.

The cargo companies have an investment in their current planes and they wouldn't be phased out right away. The UAVs would probably be phased in incrementally for short and medium hops. Probably easier, from a technology standpoint, to make an efficient small-cargo UAV than a full competitor for a 727 or DC10 or whatever FedEx is running these days.

Quote:

Zeppelin cargo drones might make sense

I was actually thinking that cargo UAVs would be an area that some radical ideas could be tried before they were applied to human transport. Things like hybrid lighter-than-air lifting bodies.

Weird, I would have thought air cargo would be significantly less energy efficient than trucks:

It's not like pilots are a huge obstacle in current air freight. Cargo drones don't make sense for large scale freight. Only on the small end competing with helicopters and medflights in cessnas for things like organs.

Maybe there's a cost benefit to replacing salaries and benefits with startup costs and maintenance contracts.

What what type of air freight?

Not sure why it matters. If the cost of installing, maintaining, running an automated piloting system is less than paying the salaries and benefits, support systems, and scheduling issues associated with human pilots, I'm not sure whether it matters what type of air freight we're talking about.

The other LEO use is for surveillance--flying a small robot into a hard-to-reach place to snoop around. That should require a warrant, but I don't particularly have a problem with it either. It's just another tool.

The potential for abuse is orthogonal to the technology here. We need to seriously rethink how our police work, and how to keep them accountable, but we're never going to succeed by simply taking away certain toys.

But would these kinds of devices only be used by law enforcement or other governmental agencies?

Once they green light the use of these in civilian life, the proliferation will make it affordable to anyone, who won't be using them only for "legitimate" purposes.

There is bound to be a heist movie where the crew uses a drone to survey the security systems of their target.

The other LEO use is for surveillance--flying a small robot into a hard-to-reach place to snoop around. That should require a warrant, but I don't particularly have a problem with it either. It's just another tool.

I'm not sure a warrant would be necessary. Access to a small, easily deployable drone with a FLIR camera would be invaluable for patrol officers who find themselves pursuing a vehicle or a suspect on foot. Anything the camera happens to see during the pursuit would already fall within existing laws covering the use of helicopters for surveillance. In the meantime it would be significantly less expensive than maintaining a manned air unit.

Unless you're referring to a small drone that would be manuevered into a single, private location and left there to record anything and everything that happens. In which case yeah, needs a warrant.

^ Yeah, those two scenarios are what I was thinking of. A constant high-altitude presence would be just like a police helicopter (and I think the feed should be publicly available, but maybe that's another thread). A spy drone should require a warrant, it's basically just like any other listening device.

The idea of a tiny robot carried by individual officers hadn't really occurred to me, I'm not sure how feasible it would be. Unless it flies on its own--and we're a long ways off from that--you'd need somebody operating it.

wco81 wrote:

But would these kinds of devices only be used by law enforcement or other governmental agencies?

Once they green light the use of these in civilian life, the proliferation will make it affordable to anyone, who won't be using them only for "legitimate" purposes.

There is bound to be a heist movie where the crew uses a drone to survey the security systems of their target.

It's already perfectly legal to own a remote controlled helicopter, which seems to be about the scale we're discussing. I was just having a conversation with someone who is going to build his own micro quadcopter (partially from a kit). He could probably mount a camera on it if he wanted to. You could almost certainly write software to fly on its own, if you wanted to.

The future is now! I don't think they're as generally useful as you might think. Even if law enforcement had access to advanced semi-autonomous recon drones, that's very far from being available at Walmart.

The idea of a tiny robot carried by individual officers hadn't really occurred to me, I'm not sure how feasible it would be. Unless it flies on its own--and we're a long ways off from that--you'd need somebody operating it.

I guess it all comes down to what you mean by flies on its own. Control it by telling it where to go or control it by adjusting throttle, pitch, and yaw? The former is accomplished with the RQ-11 Raven. A hand-launched vehicle that has an endurance up to 90 min.

I guess this might be a big disconnect I have with some of the people in this thread. I assume any UAV operating in non-military airspace will have a ground-based pilot, not being controlled by a software AI. Frankly, I think going to a pure software AI as the controller for authorized UAVs will put liability insurance so expensive that it will be decades before it is acceptable. All the UAVs I've considered have pilots on the ground doing the "flying". Probably just as much flying as regular pilots do now for big airlines. That is to say not a lot, but to be there and be accountable. No insurance company will say "yup, software, only $1k more per flight". Software AIs controlling planes from take off to touch down will cost probably 2 or 3 orders of magnitude more in insurance.

^ I don't know why it would be orders of magnitude more. Having a person to scapegoat doesn't make the liability any less, so it would only be that much more expensive if it was that much more likely to cause damage. They simply wouldn't fly the things in that case.

If a piloted UAV crashes into your house, you sue the state for all you can get. The fact that there was a pilot does nothing to reduce their liability. An AI wouldn't increase that liability.

I just don't think such a beast is going to show up any time soon.

Quote:

I guess it all comes down to what you mean by flies on its own. Control it by telling it where to go or control it by adjusting throttle, pitch, and yaw? The former is accomplished with the RQ-11 Raven. A hand-launched vehicle that has an endurance up to 90 min.

The former seems not-very-useful in the context we were discussing--Strumpet was discussing using a UAV to follow someone, essentially launching the thing mid-pursuit. In that case, telling it go somewhere is pointless, you need it to follow someone. That requires an AI or a human operator.

I just don't see purely AI driven bots flying and watching the mainland US anytime in the next 20 years. Nevermind commercial companies using AI flown planes to take over their business model. I think the insurance markets will not accept an airline or freighter that is only flying planes that nobody actually controls, only an AI. While the AI could be very excellent at that, I don't see the human side of the market accepting it in the next 2 decades. I'd love to be proven wrong but for the insurance markets, the first route delayed will invite claims. AIs will not be as flexible as people who can simply look at a video camera and see the next runway. I don't see a way the current public will go for it.

It's not like a pilot can just "see the next runway" either, since the next runway is nearly always going to be in use.

It seems fairly simple to allow air traffic control to do an emergency override and have an operator take over if something odd happens. Although you can imagine the communications security necessary for that...allowing a remote hijacking would sink the whole enterprise.

The video below shows the Seattle Police Department’s new Draganflyer UAV. The kite-sized micro chopper weighs three pounds and can stay aloft for about 20 minutes. As a Seattle PD officer explains in the video, it’s not allowed to fly above 400 feet and has to be operated from a SPD vehicle. Just wait, though, law enforcement agencies accross the country will soon have bigger drones capable of conducting serious suveillance. Heck, a much bigger Shadowhawk drone-chopper belonging to the Montgomery County,Texas, Sheriff’s Office recently crashed into a SWAT truck belonging to said office

Bottom line: We can't let ourselves become 21st Century serfs with no rights or no effective means of exercising our rights without being economically, criminally, or extra-judicially penalized for it by an alliance of government and corporate elites who are above the law even while the rest of us are forced to fund the apparatus of our own oppression through fines for petty offenses assessed via total surveillance of our lives.

I think we're showing a lack of imagination in how we look at this. Really. The real problems start when nano-bots become cheap & ubiquitous, enabling anonymous deployment by a variety of players. When Mexican drug cartels want to know what the DEA is doing, they'll hire a firm to infest DEA offices with nano-bots disguised as crumpled up gum wrappers or any of the other common debris found in offices. Research competitors can deploy hacker bots that leave part of themselves in your usb port as a key logger. Tiny listening devices can be embedded in the drywall before the paint goes on, operating on the energy from lighting... Snoops of all sorts can deploy tiny insect like devices that recharge themselves leeching from the magnetic fields of high voltage power lines or with sunlight. The button on your suit turns out to be a bug when it comes back from the cleaners.

If we think about it much at all, the whole notion of privacy becomes obsolete.

What has been suggested in this thread is that humanity itself is removed from law enforcement, that this tech lends itself to rampant abuse of our rights - up to and including lethal force where lethal force is unnecessary. That's the worst case scenario, and I don't buy it.

Is this just poor wording on your part, or do you honestly not believe that this tech enables enhanced abuse, including lethal abuse, in ways not possible before?

Alamout wrote:

A constant high-altitude presence would be just like a police helicopter (and I think the feed should be publicly available, but maybe that's another thread).

No, it would not be "just like a police helicopter", because the kind of pervasiveness enabled a small, cheap drone can't be matched by full-fledged helicopters today. That's the answer to comments along the lines of 'but cops can already do X, why is it a problem if drones do it?'. They can't do 'X' with the same pervasiveness that a network of drones can. This is the same reason why a border search of your laptop should not be considered the same type of "search" as rifling through a briefcase.

If someone followed you around all day, with you doing nothing other than your usual, mundane, completely legal routines, would be appreciate that spying? I sure as hell would not, and I wouldn't feel any better if that spying was being done remotely.

We've already seen the martial law approach being taken with pranks and school-age fighting, with cops being called in to deal with everything. With the always-on spy network in the air, next thing you know kids will be getting sent to jail for stealing the neighbor's laundry or letting the air out of their neighbor's tires. Hell, some people might end up jail for keying other people's cars instead of simply being dog-piled on Ars.

I'll take that bet. I'm 32. I will wager my future estate that, before I die, an unmanned arial drone will be used as a deadly weapon on a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil by a government agency or direct contractor thereof.

I consider myself the most curmudgeon/cynic/misanthrope person within a 100 mile radius, but I hope to the giant spaghetti monster you are wrong

Why would he be wrong? Seems like a sure thing to me too. Actually I'm sure you can already get a lot of people talking how awesome and good it is that the drone will be used to shoot someone.

Also: the laws have been made for very low probability of prosecution, and are thus ultra harsh to deter despite low risk of getting caught. The important thing is that as enforcement improves you relax the law, cut the jail times etc etc, which is so far where everyone else but US have been heading (everyone has been maintaining constant-ish incarceration rate through last 30 years despite new tech and better surveillance in general, while US incarceration rate increased by a lot).

No, it would not be "just like a police helicopter", because the kind of pervasiveness enabled a small, cheap drone can't be matched by full-fledged helicopters today. That's the answer to comments along the lines of 'but cops can already do X, why is it a problem if drones do it?'. They can't do 'X' with the same pervasiveness that a network of drones can. This is the same reason why a border search of your laptop should not be considered the same type of "search" as rifling through a briefcase.

If someone followed you around all day, with you doing nothing other than your usual, mundane, completely legal routines, would be appreciate that spying? I sure as hell would not, and I wouldn't feel any better if that spying was being done remotely.

Presumably the design of a loitering UAV would be such that it's camera has to be targeted at a particular spot. That makes broad surveillance and tracking somewhat unlikely. Demand for the cameras focus would probably be such that it couldn't be spared to be pointed at otherwise boring people, greatly lessening the opportunity for abuse.

Of far greater concern are networked public CCTV cameras with facial recognition technology... and that's not some sort of abstract possibility, that's being implemented by governments in many places right now.

m0nckywrench wrote:

The helium shortage makes that a non-starter. Helium is vital to industrial processes such as MIG and TIG welding, and medical procedures such are MRIs.

We could always just go back to using hydrogen. My understanding is that the Hindenburg disaster had more to do with the highly flammable exterior coating, than the hydrogen used to inflate the airship. The flammability of hydrogen is an easily mitigated risk.